Snow Leopard in action looks a lot like OS X Leopard, but its significantly faster, according to Apple. (Source: Apple)

The new OS also improves accessibility, adding support for braille wireless accessories for the visually impaired. (Source: Apple)

Apple is ready to spread OS X 10.6 to the masses

Apple's new
operating system, OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard", will beat
the company's own launch target of September – an official
launch date of August 28 was just announced. The new OS is
priced at $29 per license for OS X Leopard users (with additional
discounts for bulk license users). Apple notes, "Snow
Leopard builds on a decade of OS X innovation and success with
hundreds of refinements, new core technologies and out of the box
support for Microsoft Exchange."

Bertrand Serlet, Apple’s
senior vice president of Software Engineering, describes, "Snow
Leopard builds on our most successful operating system ever and we’re
happy to get it to users earlier than expected. For just $29,
Leopard users get a smooth upgrade to the world’s most advanced
operating system and the only system with built in Exchange
support."

The new OS is set to go head-to-head with
Microsoft's Windows 7 and delivers many major improvements for Mac
users.

Over 90 percent of the 1,000 core programs in OS X had
their performance tuned and improved, according to Apple. Many
-- namely, Finder, Mail, iCal, iChat, and Safari -- were moved from
32-bit into a 64-bit world, which boosts memory performance, among
other things. Apple says that its Finder is "more
responsive", its Mail client is twice as fast, and Time Machine
is 80 percent faster at its initial backup.

Apple includes the
new QuickTime X and Safari 4 with the OS. Apple says that the
new version of Safari is more resistant to plug-in crashes and 50
percent faster at general web browsing (Safari recently received the
accolade of being listed by Futuremark as tied with Google's Chrome
as the fastest browser).

The size of the installation has also
been cut in half freeing 7 GB.

Apple is pushing a
couple of new technologies with Snow Leopard. The first is its
Grand Central Dispatch (GCD) a technology designed to optimize
multi-core usage. Another new tech is OpenCL, a C-based open
standard, which looks to provide heterogenous processing on both GPUs
and CPUs.

Ironically, one of Apple's biggest selling point
with the new OS comes from competitor Microsoft. Apple
explains, "Snow Leopard is the only desktop operating system
with built in support for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, and it
allows you to use Mac OS X Mail, Address Book and iCal to send and
receive email, create and respond to meeting invitations, and search
and manage contacts with global address lists. Exchange information
works seamlessly within Snow Leopard so users can also take advantage
of OS X only features such as fast Spotlight searches and Quick Look
previews."

Unlimited licenses of Snow Leopard are
available for $499, half the price of an unlimited pack for Leopard.
The new OS will start shipping this Friday to customers that
pre-order. Amazon.com has already been holding an unofficial
pre-order for the last couple weeks and saw Snow Leopard jump
to the top of its software sales charts.

Snow Leopard
Server will launch on August 28, as well, alongside the new consumer
OS. The Server edition comes with Podcast Producer 2 and Mobile
Access Server and costs $499 for an unlimited license.

"If you can find a PS3 anywhere in North America that's been on shelves for more than five minutes, I'll give you 1,200 bucks for it." -- SCEA President Jack Tretton